Apple To Pay Microsoft For iPod?

A shock twist in the MP3 player market as Evil Lord Redmond reveals it got in first with the patents.

Could this end up being the most hilarious development in IT for a while? Sadly, probably not, but it doesn’t stop us all laughing about it.

It seems that Apple is being made to sweat over its iPod technology after it emerged late last week that its lazy assed lawyers took so long to patent its phenomenally successful player that Microsoft beat them to it. The fallout could – theoretically – mean Apple has to pay up to $10 per device to Evil Lord Redmond and with over 10 million of them sold to date… well, I’m smiling.

(Image:MSiPod)

Sadly however, I know a little bit about patent law and the Microsoft case will likely fall down because although it got first dibs in the patent office in May 2002 (beating Apple by two months), the feline obsessed white fetishist has had its products on the market since November 2001. Consequently, no competing firm can normally claim the rights to something that was on the market before it filed patents.

That said, quite how that great bastion of legal fair play on the other side of the Atlantic will interpret this will probably depend largely on who has the most expensively assembled legal team. But really, can you even contemplate the dumbfounding ineptitude required not to patent something as successful as the iPod until nine months after launch? I’m not a fan of Microsoft at the best of times, but you can’t blame it for seizing the opportunity.

Anyway, all this fan fair suggests ELR is on the move. Could we be seeing a Microsoft made portable music and video player – or even portable music, video and games player – within the next six months? I’d have thought so…